Friday, April 28, 2017

Albert Gubay,
the late billionaire, from humble beginning established United Kingdom’s most
successful supermarket chain Kwik Save.

It started, in 1959, when he founded value
foods. His aggressive price cuttings lead many distributors and suppliers to
refuse him.

In 1964, he
visited United States learning from there a technique which helped him built
his retailing chain. Sooner his Value Foods changed to Kwik Save, a discount retailer
chain boosting more than 1000 stores. The growth of his business was a direct
result of his use of baby shark method.

In this
method the retailer purchases goods on good payment terms, say for example, 60
or 90 days and then sell these items at or below costs. The interest on cash
generated by the sale is then used to expand retailing business.

The interest
on trade credit is received in form of discount. By selling these items he generated
cash for expansion at the same time being able to pay suppliers when the
payments became due. This method is a sort of OPM, other people’s money.

The use of
baby shark method, along with other cost cutting methods learnt from West
German retailing giant ALDI, he founded the empire consisting of hundreds of
outlets. In 1973, he sold Kwik Save for £14 million, the first step to amass
his £500 million fortune.

ALDI, the giant
German retailer was using this method much before Gubay copied it. In fact,
ALDI was where this method of retailing was perfected. Today ALDI owns more
than 10000 stores in 18 countries, with total turnover of 50 billion €.

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Since the
time of Greek thinkers man is searching for ways to study and memorize
effectively. Now a team of researchers led by John Dunlosky has unveiled number
of ways in which educators can enhance the effectiveness of learning for their
students. Moreover, teaching these strategies to students can also help saving
the cost on education and save you from becoming the next target of PEEDA
(Punjab employees’ efficiency, discipline and accountability) act.

Surprisingly
the most popular methods of study are least effective. Most popular ways are
highlighting, rereading, rot learning, and massed practice.

These methods can help enhance students understanding and ability to apply learned concepts

The most effective
ways found are :-

Testing and distributed practice

Tests are
termed as necessary evil of our education system but the research showed that
testing is a very good way to learn. Teachers can make testing less threatening
for students by making them less dramatic and more frequent. Giving weight age to class tests and quizzes
in examination is a good way to make tests fun and less threatening.

Another effective strategy is
distributive practicing

Unlike
Massed practice, which is done multiple times before moving to the next lesson,
distributive practice is spreading your practice over a period of time. This distributive practice is very effective.

Other promising
strategies to learn but enough research have not been done yet are:-

Interleaved practice

Interleaved
practice goes one step forward then distributive practice. It is like
distributive practice spread over a period of time but this also involves mixing
practice of different materials, in a single study session. This can produce
good results if already acquired level of expertise in a given subject matter
is of high degree.

Elaborative interrogation and self
explanation

Elaborative
interrogation is trying to explain why some given fact is true. While self
explanation is trying to explain how the given information is related to the
previous learned information.

Less useful
strategies are rereading, summarizing, highlighting, keyword mnemonics, imagery
for text are some of the least effective strategies. Although summarization can
be helpful in some cases but it needs time to learn hence making it less time
and cost effective.